Project Manager Build Tab

This tab on the Project Manager Dialog shows
several options associated with building the application associated
with the project. (Build an application with File | Build Project
Executable, which builds a test version for use on
your machine; or File | Build Project
Distribution, which creates a directory of all files needed
for the application, suitable for sending to another machine. See also
build-project,
which is a programmatic equivalent of the two menu commands. Be sure
you are properly licensed before distributing an application to
another machine.) Note the Help File widget, which has never
been supported, has been removed in release 6.2.

The options are:

Enable Debugging of Runtime Errors: if this option is checked
(as it is by default), then the console window is available in the
standalone application to allow debugging until the application is
ready to ship. Aborting from an error in the console will re-enter an
event-handling loop, allowing the application to continue running. If
*show-console-on-standalone-error*
is true, as it is by default, then the console will also appear
automatically when an error is signaled and not trapped by the
application. The application's icon will also appear in the system
tray,
which may be
double-clicked to expose the console window if it does not appear for
some reason on an error, or to expose it when no error has occurred.
(If a standalone application stops responding entirely, it is a good
idea to double-click the tray icon to see if there is an error in the
console.)

Note that it is the Franz Liszt icon that is displayed. The
application icon specified by the Icon File option is not used in the
system tray.

When this option is selected, the symbol
:allow-runtime-debug will be included in the
build-flags of the project.

We recommend leaving this option checked for debugging purposes until
shortly before delivering an application, and then turning the option
off for delivery, to shield the end user from the debugging console
and tray icon as well as from the possibility of continuing to use the
application after an unhandled error. When this option is turned off
and an unhandled error is signaled in the delivered application, the
project's default-error-handler-for-delivery function (see the
Advanced tab) will be
called, where the default function will show a simple dialog informing
the user that an unhandled error has occurred and that the application
will now exit. The lisp error string is included in the dialog, but
the end user is not allowed to continue running the application in its
broken state. To make a Common Graphics application handle errors more
cleanly, an application should add its own signal handlers (such as
calls to handler-bind) around
code that could possibly signal an error.

Note that it is the Franz Liszt icon that is
displayed. The application icon specified by the Icon File option is
not used in the system tray.

Enable Debugging of Build Errors (console will not exit): if
checked, the debugger will appear if an error occurs while generating
the standalone application. This is implemented by passing the symbol
:interactive as the
build-debug keyword argument to generate-application. This allows debugging
in the lisp that was generating the app, but also means that the
console for that lisp will never exit, even when no build error
occurs. Therefore, this option is not selected by default, and you
would typically select it only if a build error has occurred, and then
try again. When this option is selected, the symbol
:allow-build-debug will be included in the build-flags of the project.

Splash Bitmap: the filename of a bitmap file which will be
displayed while the application is starting up. See splash-file.

Icon File: the filename of an icon file (typically a .ico file)
to be used for the application icon. If none is supplied, the Allegro
CL icon (a bust of Franz Liszt) will be used. See icon-file.

Kill the Splash Screen When the App is Ready: Whether to remove
the standalone app's initial banner window as soon as the main window
has appeared, to avoid making the end user wait any longer. See
cg:kill-splash-screen-when-ready.

Full Recompile for Runtime Conditionalizations in Project Code.
This option is needed only if the project source code contains
#-runtime-system or
#+runtime-system reader conditionalizations to make
the project behave somewhat differently when it is run as a standalone
application than when it is run in the IDE. See full-recompile-for-runtime-conditionalizations. If
checked, all project code will be recompiled with
:runtime-system included on the *features* list before a project
distribution is produced, as described on the full-recompile-for-runtime-conditionalizations
page.

Include a manifest File for Microsoft Visual Styles: if
selected, the generated application for the project will have the
newer "Visual Styles" look and feel on the Microsoft Windows
platform. The illustration uses this new look and feel (it looks
rather different from the illustrations of the other tabs of the
Project Manager dialog). See ide:include-manifest-file-for-visual-styles and
also a-visual-style-is-active.

Runtime Option (to generate-application): generate-application must be called with a
value specified for the runtime argument. The
choices are :standard, :dynamic,
and :partners (and these are the three values for
this option). You must be licensed for whatever choice you make. See
runtime.htm for details. See also runtime-build-option.